Actress Rhea Chakraborty was questioned by the NCB for around 8 hours on Monday, the second consecutive day of her interrogation, in the drugs case linked to the death of her partner and actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The 28-year-old arrived at the agency’s office in Ballard Estate around 9:30 am and she left around 6 PM.
Dressed in a pink hooded jacket and carrying a bag, Rhea was escorted by police personnel. The actor was questioned for about six hours by the agency for the first time in the case on Sunday. She may be called again for the third such session on Tuesday, officials said.
The agency has said that it wants to question Rhea and confront her with her younger brother Showik Chakraborty (24), Rajput’s house manager Samuel Miranda (33) and his house staffer Dipesh Sawant to ascertain their roles in this alleged drug racket after it obtained mobile phone chat records and other electronic data that suggested some banned drugs were allegedly procured by these people. These three men were arrested by the NCB in this case over the last few days. The officials said the actress was questioned on these lines on Sunday.
She was earlier questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Rhea, in interviews given to multiple TV news channels, has said that she never consumed drugs herself. She had, however, claimed that Rajput used to consume marijuana.
The NCB, meanwhile, has arrested another man, identified as Anuj Keshvani, in the case. The agency said his name came up during the interrogation of Kaizan Ebrahim who was arrested by it in this case earlier. Ebrahim is currently out on bail. The agency had said it seized drugs like hashish, LSD and marijuana and cash after raids conducted against Keshvani on Sunday.
A total of nine people have been arrested till now by the NCB with seven directly linked to this probe, while two were arrested when investigation was launched under criminal sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
When the probe in the case began, the agency arrested two men, Abbas Lakhani and Karan Arora, for alleged drug peddling. Officials have claimed that through them they reached Zaid Vilatra and Abdel Basit Parihar, who are allegedly linked to this drugs case as they were in touch with Miranda.
It is claimed that Miranda told NCB investigators that he used to procure bud or curated marijuana for Rajput’s household. Miranda, they had said, used to allegedly procure drugs from them on the purported instructions of Showik, the agency officials said. Both Lakhani and Arora have been granted bail. The NCB had said it recovered 59 grams of cannabis from them.
The NCB, while seeking remand of one of the accused in this case last week, had told a local court that it was looking into the “drug citadel in Mumbai, and especially Bollywood” as part of this probe.
This case has given the NCB an “inkling” into the narcotics network and its penetration in Bollywood or the Hindi film industry, NCB Deputy Director General Mutha Ashok Jain had told reporters last week.
Various angles surrounding the death of the 34-year-old actor are being probed by three federal agencies, including the ED and the CBI.
The NCB probe began after the ED shared with it a report following the cloning of two mobile phones of Rhea.
Rajput was found dead at his flat in the suburban Bandra area on June 14.
